Tag: owned

It’s the Four Loko that makes this amusing to me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Hall County sheriff busted for DUI after blowing a 0.212, revealed that he had been drinking Four Lokos since 6 a.m.

Under normal circumstances, a story like this would roll off my back, perhaps get an eye roll out of me, knowing that police protect their own, and that regardless of how egregiously drunk the guy was, while in his county-issued vehicle, it’s safe to assume that he’s not going to be getting close to the same kind of punishment that us normal citizens would receive under similar conditions.

He may lose his job, but considering he’s out there drinking while on duty, he probably doesn’t care in the first place, and he’s most likely not going to be doing any time, or have a suspended license, or be on probation on account of the oft-cliched professional courtesy.

But what caught my attention and why this is ending up as brog-worthy is the clarity in the headline that this particular pig in question, hadn’t just been drinking since six in the morning, but he had been drinking Four Lokos in his cop car:

Couch told investigators that he had been drinking several Four Lokos since 6 a.m. that morning. Investigators also found two open cans of Bahama Mama that had spilled in his car.

The devil is in the details, and now we’re talking. 

Obviously, anyone who’s ever known me might recall my own fascination with Four Loko back over a decade ago.  I was mystified by the fact that these shitty, $4 tall boys of nuclear race piss were actually killing college bros, dumb enough to be drinking more than like, one, at a time.  When the government declared banishment on the drinks, for whatever reason, I felt the compulsion to seek out some of these awful drinks, and managed to procure several cans of various flavors.

Over the next years, I would bust them out at social gatherings or Dragon*Cons as my drink of choice in order to get a healthy buzz going, and make no mistake, one can of any Four Loko was instant drunk, and anything beyond that was playing with fire.

Eventually, I would steer away from this dumbass behavior, and the remainder of my hoarded cans would remain ironic collector’s items, that is, until for whatever reason, some of them would spontaneously eat their own cans, leading to some obnoxious messes that I had to clean and eventually realized that I should just chuck them out, thus closing the book on my keepsake cans of Four Loko.

Back to the present, Four Loko survived government intervention, but they apparently changed the formula somewhat to be less lethal when drank in stupid amounts, and they’re still available at gas stations and wherever shitty booze is sold.  And apparently for one Hall County sheriff, it was his go-to drink for when he wanted to get smashed on the job.

Like I said, if it were just a story of a cop who got blasted on the clock, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought beyond knee-jerk disgust and disappointment in the system.  But finding out that he had been getting smashed on Four Loko since six in the morning, and he was discovered obliterated five and a half hours later, man clearly had some serious demons in his closet for all this to be transpiring.

And that 0.212% BAC is pretty frightening, because to my understanding that’s basically saying that over 20% of the blood in his body was tainted with alcohol.  I’ve gotten drunk off of Four Loko before (always under slightly more responsible, non-driving conditions), but I have come down from the buzz pretty normally, so I doubt that I was ever remotely close to a 0.212% BAC, so I’m curious to how many cans of the jet fuel he consumed, and let’s not ignore the fact that he had several open cans of Bahama Mama, which is another fruity, race piss-like canned booze, so clearly this hick sheriff was having a one-man party in his cruiser.

Either way, I’m amused by the brief resurrection of Four Loko into the public lexicon, and the ironic and pathetic circumstances in which they did so.  In a way, there isn’t a better way for it to have happened, and 16 years later, Four Loko is running it back with inebriated chaos like it’s 2010 all over again.

Is there a more perfect show than Batman the Animated Series?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is more of a rhetorical question because the answer is no, there really isn’t.  Obviously this is subject to personal preference, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only one out there who has this particular opinion.

I had finished watching WWE Elimination Chamber, and it was a pretty mediocre show overall; although the men’s and women’s chamber matches had outcomes that I didn’t get right, the Becky vs. AJ and the Balor vs. Punk matches were very obviously predictable.  Danhausen being the mystery crate reveal made me feel like the whole buildup is this generation’s Gobbledy Gooker, but probably more accurately the WWE’s need for a wacky character they can push towards the younger audiences and kids to help move merch and gain wider appeal.

But the overall feeling I had once the show was over was general disappointment and apathy, but mostly disappointment that mythical wife had actually paid real money for ESPN Unlimited so that I could watch PLEs, and it just so happens that the first one I come across is a relative clunker.  I think it might be a safe bet that once Wrestlemania passes, to pull the plug on the service since we already have like four other services we’re subscribed to.

Anyway, seeing as how the night wasn’t quite too late even though I would benefit from getting more sleep than I do on the regular, I felt like I didn’t want to end my television watching experience with an underwhelming wrestling show, so I switched to HBO Max where I knew that they had the entire library of Batman the Animated Series, and where I’d been watching an episode here or there, because it was perfect in the sense that it was high quality content that I’d already seen a million times and could multitask during, and the episodes are just 22 minutes, which means they’re no major time commitment.

It was while watching the episode of Clayface’s debut, it dawned on me that the reason why I seem to feel that Batman TAS has become somewhat of a default fallback, is because of what I just said, that it was the perfect show.  Not just for the aforementioned reasons, but holistically, the show is just perfect, in just about every other way as well.

Art direction, execution, writing, music, an entry of DC comics storytelling, light years ahead of its time, parading around as a kid’s show.  Believe me, I have seen every single episode of the show, and I’m having a really difficult time at thinking of any episodes that are actual 100% clunkers, with no redeemable quality to them, and by that criteria, I can’t say there are really any.  Sure, there are some episodes that I may want to skim or possibly skip, like the one where Batman is gassed by the Penguin, and he has to be saved by some kids, but by and large, I anticipate myself going to really enjoy the steady, gradual and methodical rewatch of Batman TAS with an episode or two every now and then.

And anyone who knows me knows that I almost never rewatch anything, because there’s so much content out in the world, lots of which I want to watch, that I very seldom go back and rewatch anything, because that time could be spent imbibing on something I haven’t seen before.

But Batman TAS?  It’s perfect in just about every subjective and measurable metric, and the most important thing is that it’s extraordinary ability to chase any shitty example of viewing media and bring me back believing that there’s good television out there, and that there’s really no bad time to catch an episode of the TAS.

Nobody is more impressed with mediocrity than me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A day ago, I got my renewed passport in the mail.  I was very impressed at the turnaround on this, seeing as how I had applied for it a mere two weeks prior.  I’d been sitting on an email reminder to renew my passport from several months ago, but mythical wife and I had been kicking the idea around to go abroad for a vacation sometime within the next year, and the last thing I wanted was to have a passport on the cusp of expiration, and it causing all sorts of preventable complication later down the line.

A little over a year ago, I applied and received passports for both of my kids, and much like my own initial passport from eons ago, it was quite the nerve-wracking process of making sure I had birth certificates, proofs of residence, clothes, boots, motorcycle, etc.  In fact, when I got my very first one, I had to actually go into Washington DC to the passport office due to some reason I can’t remember, and even that was for a temporary, one-year only passport, all so I could go to fucking Toronto, of all places.

Either way, passports for my kids was like a turnaround of four months, and I’m proud of myself for having the wherewithal to have started as early as I did, so that they would be done for the cruise that we went on just months after receiving them.

When I expressed to my friends at how pleased I was that I got my renewed passport in just two weeks, like most of the shit I say to the group chat with most of my friends, it was met with silence, and then eventually some of my wiser guys blurting out that it’s not impressive since renewals are usually faster than getting brand new passports.

Yes, that may be the case, as I recall my last renewal taking maybe 6-8 weeks, but this was fucking two.  Even the passport office dot gov website had predicted a turnaround of like, end of March, which would still be more than sufficient to my potential summer needs, but then I started getting status update emails that already had tracking numbers and an expected delivery date of February 20.

I made a joke to my friends that we could all agree that just about everything in Washington is a putrid wasteland of process, corruption and bullshit, but whatever’s going on at Passport Services, I had just gotten a renewal done and delivered in just two weeks.  But like I said, crickets.

What I’m getting at is that it’s apparent that there’s nobody in the world more impressed with mediocrity than me.  I’m so nihilistic, so jaded, and so pessimistic about the state of America and the rest of the world, that when people in the world simply perform to their baseline job descriptions, I’m fucking over the moon.

Yeah, I know that my generally droll outlook isn’t necessarily the best looking or something to be proud of, but I can’t help it.  I get so disappointed when people fail to meet my expectations, the only seemingly adequate defense mechanism to adopt is to assume utter incompetence across the board, to where when people deliver mediocrity, my mind is blown away and it brings me great joy that there are occasionally competent people in the world.

And anyone who actually does go above and beyond for me, well, I had Yelp Elite status for like the better part of eight years because I was ready and willing to review a million stars to any businesses that impressed me with such.

Needless to say, while my friends might not be impressed with a two-week turnaround for a passport renewal, I was quite elated and impressed by it.  Maybe some robots have taken over working at Passport Services, because everything else in Washington DC is steaming hot bullshit, and I can’t imagine any possible other alternative to a task being done so exceptionally, than if it were done by artificial intelligence.

This has got to be a first, right?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back when mythical wife was pregnant for the first time, she didn’t deal with a lot of the stereotypical things that are associated with pregnant women.  No crazy cravings for shit like pickles and ice cream, no rampant morning sickness that had her running to the bathroom sporadically.  However, if there was one thing that could be construed something of a craving, it was that she wanted to have some ice to chew on occasionally.

However, the refrigerator at my home doesn’t have a water/ice function.  At that time, I was still content with buying and drinking bottled water, so we never really had need for ice, beyond occasional recipes or the want for a mixed drink, in which we did have the old tech ice cube trays in the freezer for such things.

Long story short, mythical wife ended up purchasing a countertop ice machine to be able to make fresh ice in six minutes, and satiate her want for ice cubes.  Our household would eventually get used to having the ice machine, and after enough guilting about the environment, we purchased a water cooler and stopped purchasing bottles, and since my water was now coming in cups and bottles, I started getting used to being able to load up a bunch of ice to keep my drinks colder longer.

The thing is, either they’re not supposed to be left up and running 24/7 like we did, or much like lots of machines of today, they’re designed to eventually fail and die, which is exactly what happened to ours.  After getting used to it, it really sucked to suddenly not be able to have fresh ice whenever we wanted to, which is about as big of a first-world problem there could be, but bear with me here.

Fast forward, over the last few years, my household has gone through three ice machines.  As noted above, either they’re not supposed to be running 24/7, or they really are just kind of shittily made and aren’t meant to last beyond 18 months, which seems to have been the general lifespan for all of them.

Needless to say, when I bought ice maker #4, I actually had the wherewithal to pay the $12 to Target and get the 2-year replacement plan.  By now, I had enough empirical evidence to take the gamble that #4 would not make it 24 months, and that if I played my cards right, should theoretically be able to get a free replacement in the future, for the low-cost of $12.

Otherwise, like the other 98% of electronics I’ve ever purchased in my life, I would’ve declined the protection plan without a second thought.  In all those cases, knock on wood, either nothing has happened within two years, or there’s some funny business that leads to my shit being invalid for coverage, and it resulting in a sunk money cost and feeling of remorse for wasting the cash in the first place.

Either way, ice maker #4 died, as anticipated it would eventually do, but this time, the moment of dread and first-world problem anguish at having to go procure ice machine #5, I had a moment of excited curiosity, at being able to explore the protection plan I had the wise wherewithal to invest in back in May 2024.

Because I’m a digital packrat that saves every single e-receipt and document pertaining to anything I’ve ever purchased online, I was fairly easily able to track down all needed documentation to file a claim, and the process was pretty painless and simple, and within maybe 90 minutes, I had a submission, an approval and a resolution completed.  Target has apparently given up on peddling ice machines, so the insurance company resolved to just reimburse me the cost of ice maker #4, effectively having paid just $12 for it, less the minute aggravation of having to go track down #5.

But as the title of this post said, this has got to be like the first time in history, at least for me, where a protection plan actually worked and paid out, right?  Usually PPs are the consumer’s version of sucker bets, like insurance in blackjack, but after years of evidence of how short-lived ice makers are, I made an educated decision, and it paid off, without any real complications.

It brings me great joy, and softens the first-world gripe of not having fresh ice until I can get #5.  The question is if, the retailer I get it from, if they’ll offer a protection plan on it as well, because it seems to be a wise investment on these little machines.  But if they do, I think I’mma take it again, and hope it works out in 18 months from now

It’s always going to be Springfield Mall

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC Washington: non-fatal shooting incident occurs at Springfield Town Center between teenagers arguing about something reportedly nothing and inconsequential

It’s not that often that I think much about my old stomping grounds, and it’s been over a decade since the topic of Springfield Town Center Mall has been in the brog, but here we are, thanks to an eerily accurate feeding from the algorithm to me, letting me know about a shooting incident in the shopping mall that I’d wasted endless amounts of hours of my life at.

As I opined in a comment on social media, they can change the name of the joint, and they can change all the stores inside the place, but Springfield Mall will always be Springfield Mall, a place cursed and destined to be a place of underlying danger and the uneasy feeling shoppers will always have that no matter what things appear around them, they’re not entirely safe.  MS-13 beheadings and 9/11 hijacker presence have a tendency to leave their bad juju on a place, kind of like the premise of The Grudge.

Thinking back to this assessment, it’s almost a miracle that I’m alive, considering the massive amounts of danger commensurate to how much time I spent there probably having increased my mortality rate throughout my teenage years.

It’s the least surprising thing in the world to hear news of spontaneous violence erupting within the walls of Springfield Town Center considering the bones and likely jerry-rigged graves in which the place was built onto, and watching the video of the incident, it doesn’t look like much has changed over the last 10+ years of Springfield Mall’s final days and Town Center’s day-to-day operations.

Shithead teenagers loitering around the place, manifesting beefs out of absolutely nothing, and ultimately erupting into gun violence, what I saw in the video looked like it could’ve been straight out of 1999, minus the taste in fashion, and the presence of bystanders all brandishing smart phones trying to video the incident instead of you know, calling 9-1-1.

Then again, it’s no secret that among the things that carried over from the old days into the current is the physical Fairfax County Police precinct in the mall itself, because nothing says ‘we’re [not] a safe place’ than having to have local cops ready at the helm, within ear shot at any given time.

The point remains, as unfortunate it is to ever hear of gun violence in any way shape or form, it’s good that nobody was killed and the offending parties were apprehended.  But I still admit to being amused at the ironic reality that no matter how much time has passed, no matter that the name of the joint has changed, and no matter how much the insides of the shopping center has changed, nothing will ever, ever change the fact that 6500 Springfield will always be, Springfield Mall.

I love how the Nick Castellanos saga has given more exposure to Presidente beer since it was on Dexter

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A drive into deep left field by Castellanos: Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos on the chopping block, attempts to get in front of a story of how his fallout in Philadelphia began, including specifying an incident where after being benched, he brought a Presidente (beer) into the dugout while criticizing the manager

Despite the fact that he landed on the Phillies and always seemed to drink the Kool-Aid and be one of those dudes that absolutely murdered the Braves, I’ve always kind of liked Nick Castellanos.  For all the silly reasons to like a player, like for many, it started with the whole meme of Castellanos blasting a home run in the middle of an announcer apologizing on air for making a homophobic remark, causing him to seamlessly segue out of his apology to report on the homer before easing right back into the apology. 

But then it became apparent that there seemed to be this hilariously coincidental tendency for Nick Castellanos to crank home runs out at awkward moments of announcing, leading to the whole meme of Bad Timing Nick Castellanos, and that’s really all I needed for him to land in my general good graces.

Anyway, as the story goes, in 2025, Nick Castellanos was pulled out of a game for lackadaisical effort, and he took so much offense to it, that, in his own admission, he had grabbed a beer out of the clubhouse and brought it back to the dugout where he was prepared to drink it in the middle of an active game while criticizing manager Rob Thomson’s leadership of the team.

This apparently fractured his position with the team, and with some dwindling performance, has made it really easy for the Phillies to want to cut him, despite the fact that they still owe him $20 million for the 2026 season, which they are responsible for, regardless of if he’s playing for the Phillies or not.

I’d love it if the Braves picked him up when the Phillies inevitably do release him, because he’d only cost the team $780K, with the Phils being on the hook for the remaining $19.25M, because he would provide some good depth for when inevitably Ronald Acuña, Jr. gets hurt again, and Castellanos could supply some power off the bench, but I wouldn’t bet money on the Braves getting him.

Regardless, anticipating some fallout for why the Phillies want to cut him so badly, Nick Castellanos took some time to hand write out a summary of the incident in Miami that seemed to be the beginning of the end for his time in Philadelphia, and as admirable it is that he wants to take accountability for his actions and control the narrative by admitting it first, one of the things that stuck out for me, was the oddly specific clarification that it wasn’t just any old beer he brought into the dugout to start criticizing Rob Thomson with, it was very specifically identified as a Presidente.              

I’ve had Presidente beer before, several times in fact.  There was one season of Dexter where just about every character was drinking it whenever there were any characters drinking beer, and the subliminal saturation of it did its job, and I grew curious about the brand, and when I happened to come across it, I didn’t hesitate to grab a sixer to see what all the fuss was about in Dexter.

It’s really not that great of a beer, but the connection to Dexter still made me like it.  And also being the baseball nerd I really used to be, the fact that it was a Dominican beer made me feel some connection to all the Latin players that populated the majority of the MLB.

Needless to say, the mention and inadvertent plugging of Presidente by Castellanos opened up that curiosity from the past, and I’m tickled that he clearly must be a fan of the brew to the point where he had to be very specific at mentioning that it was a Presidente that he brought to the dugout.

The Presidente brand must also be pretty amused, or a little mortified that they got such a generous free plug, because the reality is that they probably haven’t gotten this much advertising since that season of Dexter.  And because it’s coming from a player that I think positively of, it’s bringing that similar curiosity I had over ten years ago that if I were to come across a sixer or a forty of Presidente, I might have to pull the trigger.

Mina Kimes destroyed Dan Orlovsky like Sting vs. The Demon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This would have been a little bit better had Drake Maye not shit the bed so badly, and the New England Patriots actually won the Super Bowl, but I don’t really want this to go unmentioned, because it was truly a masterclass in pwning a noob.

But prior to the actual Super Bowl, ESPN analyst Mina Kimes absolutely unleashed a massive pwning onto fellow analyst, former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky, on the subject of why Drake Maye received her MVP vote over Matthew Stafford.  I admit that I have a lot of reasons why I’m fond of Mina Kimes, from the Korean heritage, that she shares a name with one of my kids, is a pretty girl that likes and knows sports, the fact that mythical wife and I met her before she really broke through covering a League of Legends event, but biases aside, this was truly a demonstration of a person completely dominating another person in a debate.

It was like when the KiSS Demon had a 1v1 against Sting in WCW, one of my friends then whom was watching the event with us, was talking about how this was the night, this was when The Demon was going to break through, he was going to upset the legendary Sting, etc, etc.

They brawled for about a minute outside of the ring, but once they got into the ring, Sting dropped the Demon in like 43 seconds, after some quick Stinger Splashes and a Scorpion Death Drop.

Kimes vs. Orlovsky was kind of similar, but in reverse, where Kimes just buzzsaws the shit out of Orlovsky in about a minute first, and ol’ Dan sputtering and futilely swinging wildly, trying to salvage any sort of face at getting completely wrecked, but basically getting shut down repeatedly.  Honestly, he would’ve looked better and cooler had he just sat there silent after Kimes’ onslaught and just said that he had no rebuttal.

Honestly though, this doesn’t make the brog had it not been for Kimes’ absolutely brutal and personal approach.  People get owned on television and on the internet countless times every day, but seldom is it so surgical, so precise and so targeted as Kimes carved into Orlovsky.  And it was this specific line in which she started her vicious assault that I loved the most:

I’m a voter, and I voted for Drake Maye. And I’m right. And I’m going to explain to Dan Orlovsky why he’s wrong,”

It doesn’t even matter that she rattled off like 17 reasons that validate her claim.  It’s the fact that she anticipated all of Orlovsky’s or any detractor’s possible rebuttal points and preemptively shuts them down with tangible evidence and statistics and puts her opponent into a checkmate position before he can even make his own opening move. 

It’s like when I’m playing Aether Keeps in Fire Emblem Heroes, where the carefully curated enemy team from some player in Taiwan kills five out of seven units before I can even make a first move, but unlike Orlovsky, I just stare at the screen for a second and then just surrender the match without wasting anymore time.

Instead, Orlovsky tries his best to rebut anything, and even adds a little anecdote:

This is my biggest pushback to you, and this is where you lose it.

Except what he says next was something that Kimes had already anticipated, already got in front of it and shut it down, and had to remind him that she had done so, leaving Orlovsky to just sit there looking like he had shit his pants.  It’s very, very, very apparent that Mina Kimes knows what the fuck she’s talking about, especially when it comes to football, but regardless of just how bright she is, she’ll never not have the gender bias from her peers and most ESPN viewers that assume she’s wrong solely because she’s not just a woman, but isn’t a former player or team personnel.

But if those passive slights are what is fueling such surgical brutality from Mina Kimes to all her naysayers, I’ll be waiting with popcorn for the next time she murders someone on the stick.

Ain’t nobody ready, for Mina Kimes.